SageTV Installation on Windows Home Server (WHS)

[inouridr]

Hello everyone,

I am in the process of evaluating SageTV as a viable replacement to discontinue the increasingly more costly AT&T Uverse service. My goal is to replace Uverse with a combination of HD off-air and Internet (Hulu, Netflix, PlayOn ) content. In order to do this, I will run SageTV on WHS with a couple HD-300 extenders and a couple software extenders (not sure yet whether the Client or Placeshifter app is best solution). I have determined that a successful transition to SageTV would result in a monthly savings of $80 after startup costs are recovered.


I have already installed SageTV for WHS successfully which is on a home built AMD Athlon X2 server running two GB ram. I have over 10 terabyte of drive capacity. My server has a monitor, mouse and keyboard connected but is treated as a headless system 99.9% of the time.


I have purchased and installed a HVR-2250 which was incredibly simple. I’ve had a bit more difficulty with the software configuration in SageTV. Initially, I couldn’t get the tuners to even scan for TV signals, but I remembered many comments being made in this forum about problems using a shared folder on WHS to record content. I had used the default WHS ‘Recorded TV’ folder and once I discontinued sharing it, I was able to scan for channels during the setup.


I am now trying to receive any channel signals and I am unable. I have the Philips SDV8625t/27 Indoor/Outdoor Digital antenna (rated up to 25 miles) connected to the HVR-2250, but this is not powerful enough I guess for my area. I bought only to test SageTV and thought I would at least be able to pick up one or two channels. I live in Ceres California, near a small local airport. My primary television market is 70+ miles away in Sacramento, with the nearest tower about 56 miles away. I think I’m getting something resembling a signal in SageTV on a couple channels as they report a strength of 6% most of the time, but occasionally burst to 100% for less than a second. In the end, this isn’t resulting in anything other than a blue screen. Complete channel scanning returns zero channels found. I will next attempt a more serious outdoor antenna that has a 150 mile range.


I have a few questions for those of you running SageTV on WHS and I welcome your answers:

Since Hulu is a software installation on the client PC (or should I be installing it on the server?), how does this work for the HD-300 extender? Does the extender actually install the software, or must I use PlayOn to view Hulu content from an HD-300?


All the plugins seem to require installation on the client PC and not on the WHS server box (at least I can’t do it from the Client app). Am I supposed to be installing the plugins on the server and if yes, how? Or does this mean I will have to install the plugins repeatedly on every client I use? How does this work for the HD-300 extender?


I’ve seen references that I should save recordings to a drive which is not part of the server pool to get the best performance (and format the drive to 64k). Does this mean I should connect the drive to WHS as a backup drive instead of a pooled drive? If yes, how do I tell SageTV the path to the drive? I’ve tried using the server name and drive letter path, but SageTV always says the path does not exist and asks if I want to create it.


Your advise and wisdom is GREATLY appreciated.

Regards,

inouridr